At the beginning of its 239th orbit of Mars, the Global Surveyor's
Mars Orbiter Camera obtained another image of the Cydonia. At 7:02 AM
PDT on 14 April, the MGS spacecraft attempted to image an area,
sometimes referred to as the "City," centered at 40.86° N,
9.91° W (USGS MDIM Coordinates), see figure, below. Note that
this figure shows a different position than that shown on the MGS
Project web page devoted to explaining swath size. The MGS
Project page does not represent what was actually targeted. The image
below, a screen dump from the targeting software, is what the MOC was
commanded to observe.

Owing to spacecraft pointing control limitations, the actual area
imaged was centered at 40.84° N, 9.98° W (see software
screen dump, below). This offset, approximately 3.13 km (1.9 mi) in
longitude, is greater than one-half of the field-of-view (FOV = 2.6
km or 1.6 mi), and there is very little if any overlap between the
targeted features and those observed. The high resolution image has
scale of 2.5 m (8.2 feet) per pixel, and was acquired at nearly a
vertical viewing angle (2.35°).

New MOC Data

JPEG = 530 KB

The figure above shows the low resolution, wide angle context frame
acquired during orbit 239. The white box outlines the location of the
high resolution narrow angle image. Note that the atmosphere is
considerably clearer than for the previous Cydonia image (of the
"Face"), taken last week.

WARNING: THE FOLLOWING IMAGES ARE VERY BIG

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The processed, full-resolution narrow angle image, available above,
shows numerous features that illustrate why scientific interest in the
Cydonia area, as well as other regions of fretted terrain (Nilosyrtis,
Deuteronilus, Protonilus), is so high. Seen in this image are a
number of mass movements (landslides), moated hills and peaks and
intensely pitted surfaces (created by differential erosion of various
layers), and features that may reflect periglacial processes (those
involving the movement of ice- and/or water-saturated soil and
debris).

Note: The MOC images are made available
in order to share with the public the excitement of new
discoveries being made via the Mars Global Surveyor spacecraft.
The images may be reproduced only if the
images are credited to "Malin Space Science Systems/NASA".
Release of an image does not constitute a release of
scientific data. An image and its caption should not be
referenced in the scientific literature. Full data releases
to the scientific community are scheduled by the Mars Global
Surveyor Project and NASA Planetary Data System. Typically, data
will be released after a 6 month calibration and validation period.